Uh oh, rockcairn69...your girlfriend has babies on her mind!
This Is the Day We Give Babies Away is a traditional folksong sung while rocking babies. These are the lyrics as transcribed on the Mudcat Cafe site (mudcat.org), from Rosalie Sorrels' album Rosalie's Songbag from the early 1960s. She calls it the "Hostile Baby-Rocking Song," and she talks a bit before the singing starts:
All right, it's 5:30 in the morning. That kid has not quit howling now for six hours. You're getting sort of desperate, breaking out into a cold sweat because you know that all those other kids are going to get up in about another half hour and they're going to demand cereal and peanut sandwiches and milk. And you forgot to get milk. Oh, God. All the paregoric is gone. It's gone because you drank it. Things are getting awful bad and you need something else. Every culture's got one: it's the hostile baby-rocking song. You just can't keep all that stuff bottled up inside yourself. You need to let it out some way, or you'd get strange . . . punch the baby in the mouth . . . and you can't do that. You'd get an awful big ticket for it, and it makes you feel lousy. So you take that baby and you rock it firmly, smile sweetly . . . and you sing the hostile baby-rocking song:
This is the day we give babies away
With a half a pound of tea
You just open the lid, and out pops the kid
With a twelve month guarantee.
This is the day we give babies away
With a half a pound of tea
If you know any ladies who want any babies
Just send them round to me
There's an island where out in the sea
Where babies grow up on the trees
It's oh so much fun, to swing in the sun
But you have to watch out if you sneeze, you sneeze
You have to watch out if you sneeze
You have to watch out if you sneeze
'Cause swinging up there in the breeze
If you happen to cough, you might very well fall off
And tumble down flop on your knees, your knees
And tumble down flop on your knees.
And when the stormy winds wail
And the breezes blow up in a gale
There's oh such a plopping and flopping and dropping
And fat little babies just hail, just hail
And fat little babies just hail.
And the babies lie there in a pile
And grownups come after a while
And they always pass by any babies that cry
They take only babies that smile, that smile
Take triplets or twins if they'll smile
There's an island where out in the sea
Where babies grow up on the trees
It's oh so much fun, to swing in the sun
But you have to watch out if you sneeze, you sneeze
You have to watch out if you sneeze
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